Pacifc Rim: Action on a Giant Scale

Rating: 7/10 (22 July 2013)

Pacific Rim is the latest would-be blockbuster with anger issues. Once again, we have a movie that seems determined to show as much urban destruction as possible. This time, the combatants aren't opposing armies or even superheroes and super villains, but giant troll-like monsters and the equally mammoth robots designed to fight them off.
Director Guillermo del Toro tries hard to distinguish his film from similar movies (Transformers, Avengers, etc) by not only the scale of the action—which is incredible—but moreover by devoting a lot of screen time to the characters behind all the on screen mayhem. The script delves rather deeply into the psyches of our principal heroes, Raleigh and Mako (played by Charlie Hunnam and Riko Kikuchi), a pair of pilots who operate the aforementioned giant robots, and this is a wise move: when their war machine goes toe-to-toe with a ravenous behemoth, we know there's actually someone of flesh and blood inside all that metal. This increases not only viewer empathy but suspense as well. And Raleigh and Mako are genuinely interesting characters. Raleigh is a has-been veteran who may have lost the will to fight, while the winsome rookie Mako simmers with pent-up rage and fear beneath her calm, prim facade.
Though both Hunnam and Kikuchi, as well as the extensive supporting cast (which includes Ron Perlman as a shady businessman who sells monster parts on the black market), are excellent in their roles, the standout performance goes to Idris Elba as the enigmatic Stacker Pentecost. Pentecost is the commander of the world's small army of robotic defenders, a man of iron discipline and penetrating insight who will do anything to defeat the monsters that have crawled up from the ocean's depths. Elba has always been a fine actor, but this is his best showing to date.
Pacific Rim's biggest flaws are a slow middle portion and the fact that the story doesn't do as much with some of its main characters as it could. The script really lets us get to know these men and women as believable individuals, but then loses them in the mechanics of the plot. At 132 minutes, Pacific Rim couldn't have been any longer for theatrical release, but I'd be curious if a future Director's Cut DVD might flesh out some of the subplots that are left dangling in the movie as it now stands.
Pacific Rim isn't far from being a really excellent action film, marred only by the above weaknesses. Those points do hold the film back from true greatness, but it's still a highly entertaining thrill-ride. Where else can you see a giant robot bludgeon a lumbering ogre into submission with a boat?